Pulse
by YelyahFran
Summary: She no longer cares what he is. He just... is.


"Have you ever looked up and thought about how weird stars are?"

She's propped up onto her elbows and looking at the balls of gas dancing above her in the sky when she decides that she wants to talk to someone. The silence is usually so comforting, an opportunity to listen to the pulse of the world around her; but at that moment, she just wants one of them to break her reverie.

"No."

She turns her head to see Sun sitting on the mat, knees tucked close to her chest, a few feet away from her on the old boat. The Korean woman is also looking up but she knows that they aren't seeing the same thing. She thinks of how both she and Sun had always been too preoccupied with their problems to just stop and look up.

"They were never meant to be like this." She thinks out loud and watches as Sun tucks her knees even closer. "If you think about it, they're supposed to be just balls of gas in space that look pretty from down here; but they're so much more than that."

"They're symbols to mankind," Wolfgang finishes the thought as he sits cross legged right in front of her feet. "Of wishes, hope, all the things that might never be." There's a twinge of sorrow in his voice and she smiles at the idea of how someone like him is just as weak and broken as her on the inside.

"How odd." She finds Capheus lying right next to her. She expects him to keep going but she can feel that they're all thinking the exact same thing. They're all thinking of how the importance of stars were just another thing that should never have been but is. It's a lovely thought that brings a smile onto her face.

She looks at the hand clasped in hers and thinks of how they had beaten the odds, about how easy it would have been to just never be. Yet, he isn't like the other sensates, just visiting her from wherever they might be. He's physically there with her and his presence comforts her more than the sound of the sea gently crashing against the boat.

She puts her head on his chest and listens to his heart beating. Strangely enough, it reminds her of the pulse of the rest of the world, a somehow loud yet gentle sound with the power to make her stop in her tracks. She has to bite her lip to stop her smile from growing so wide that it starts to hurt her face.

"I feel bad for being so happy. It's almost selfish, isn't it?" She says out loud but none of the other sensates reply even though she can feel them there. "I have no idea what's going to happen to me, to Will, to all of us; but this is the best I've felt in a very long time."

"It's okay for you to be happy," Capheus says. "Because a person shouldn't have to feel bad about feeling happy. If that is how you feel, then you shouldn't have to feel sorry about it. None of it is in your hands, after all."

She thinks of how they ended up there. There were countless other people in the world who could have been a sensate, yet there she was. She had found solace in her cluster, something she had given up searching for long ago.

But they all knew that it was more than just the cluster she found peace in.

There are so many things she wanted to say to him, things she can't say just yet. He had somehow become her life force, a reason to be okay again. She remembers standing in the middle of that church wreckage, feeling so out of place; and yet, she felt at home again when she saw him.

She doesn't believe in love at first sight but she does believe in fate. There had been nights in London where she would think of him and wonder who the hell he was, who the hell he could be to her. Those questions would consume her until she would finally fall asleep and dream of his face.

As they lay there on the boat, she realises she no longer cares about any of that. He is the blood in her veins, the crook of her smile, the deep breaths she takes, the last precious swig of wine at the bottom of the bottle, the pulse of the earth around her. Regardless of what he is, he had changed her.

"Riley?" Wolfgang says as he passes a joint to Sun.

"Hmm?"

"What does it feel like to love someone like that?"

She doesn't expect it and she has to think for several minutes in order to answer him properly. It isn't the type of question that she expected someone like Wolfgang to voice. She doesn't have to know that there's a smirk on Sun's face.

It feels like the warmth from the rays of the sun embracing her after a cold night. It feels like writing on clean paper with a new pen. It feels like hearing the first note of her favourite song. It feels like laying on the rug underneath her father's piano as he plays.

"It's beautiful."

* * *

 **I watched the entire first season of this show in one day and I feel like I need serious help.**


End file.
